Within the academy, many have expressed outrage at the
pricing and sales strategies of the aggregated commercial
firms. We dismiss that point of view. The problem lies not
with the commercial firms, who rightly endeavor to transfer
money from higher education institutions to their
shareholders. The problem lies in the behavior of those of us
in higher education the buyers who fail to aggregate at scale
in the interests of our institutions. Achieving
multi-institutional scale in order to level the playing field
and become players in the new game in this era of digital
distribution and reuse requires that we make behavioral
changes. These changes are neither pro-commercial nor
anti-commercial, and attempts to frame them as such are
without merit. The changes are, rather, pro-institutional.
From The Game Has
Changed